But he kept his tone tranquil.
‘Mr McLeish, I want you, Noakes and Kate to accompany me to Chris’s flat while Doyle waits here with Thelma.’ He held her eyes steadily. ‘We’re going to find your brother, Thelma. And when we do, you’ll need to be strong.’
‘Same as you’ve allus been,’ Noakes added, with such a gracious, gentle deference of tone that Burton blinked in surprise. Her fellow DS never ceased to confound expectations.
Over the woman’s head, Doyle’s eyes met Markham’s.
The message passed between them. We’re going to break down the door of Burt’s flat.
‘I’ll take Ms Macdonald inside, sir. We c’n have a brew in the staffroom.’
‘Excellent idea, Doyle.’ The DI smiled charmingly. ‘You see, I’m leaving you in good hands.’
The young DC offered her his arm. Almost as though they were a courting couple, thought Burton suppressing a wave of hysterical laughter. The tension was getting to her.
As soon as they were out of sight, she turned to Markham.
‘You think Harte and Pickering have got him, sir,’ she said baldly.
‘The poor bastard’s a threat,’ Noakes replied grimly. ‘They can’t be sure he won’t blab . . . An’ if he’s arrested, they can’t get to him . . .’
‘What’re you expecting to find over there, Inspector?’ McLeish gestured in the direction of Chris Burt’s flat.
‘I hope to God I’m wrong,’ the DI replied. ‘But it could be a staged suicide . . .’
‘Same as Elford . . . Jesus . . . It’ll kill his sister,’ Noakes said with a sort of desperate compassion.
Markham’s face looked suddenly gaunt, almost withered. For the first time, Burton had a glimpse of how he would look in old age. Still handsome, but his features a route map of all the pain and suffering he had witnessed down the years.
‘Let’s get over there. I’ll brief you on the way,’ he told the fire chief.
* * *
Less than thirty minutes later, the four were back at the community centre. Markham held a plastic evidence bag containing a dogeared piece of paper with some scrawled text.
I did the murders. It was the badness in me. Tell Thelma I’m sorry.
‘I don’ understand.’ Noakes was not so much truculent as bewildered. ‘The two of ’em planned to frame him an’ then make it look like he’d topped hisself . . . So why wasn’t he there?’
‘They could have been afraid of being interrupted,’ Burton said. ‘Maybe Chris mentioned that Thelma usually came round at weekends. After that call from the council to Elford’s, they’d be wary . . . Safer to move him.’
‘An’ leave the confession for us to find,’ Noakes rumbled. ‘Nice touch that.’
‘Maybe they planned to have him go out with a bang,’ McLeish offered. ‘You know . . . make the whole thing even more convincing by setting a fire . . . If he’s learning disabled, why not chuck pyromania into the mix? They’d count on you putting it down to his guilty conscience . . . or him wanting to take some kind of twisted revenge on the centre . . .’
‘Chuffing Nora, McLeish, you’ve got a bit of a twisted mind yourself to come up wi’ all that,’ Noakes said with reluctant admiration.
‘I aim to please,’ the other said dourly.
‘It fits, though,’ Burton breathed.
The DI agreed. There was a horrible kind of logic to it.
‘Let’s check in with Doyle,’ he said impatiently. ‘If they planned to have Chris incinerated along with the community centre, then where the hell is he?’
The staffroom, however, was empty.
It appeared Doyle had made cups of tea, but these had never been drunk.
Markham quickly instituted a search, but of the young DC and the receptionist, there was no sign.
Even with three firefighters and two men in the static unit watching the site, no one had been seen either entering or leaving the building.
Then suddenly, ‘Have you checked the air-raid shelter?’ The stockiest of the firefighters ambled across.
‘Air-raid shelter . . . What air-raid shelter?’ McLeish stared at him.
‘One of those Anderson jobbies . . . I think the Gazette did a piece on it yonks ago . . . Out in the back garden under that manhole. You get to it through the basement. All closed up now.’ He yawned and picked a zit on his chin. Clearly today’s call-out was only marginally more exciting than rescuing cats from trees. ‘There was talk of making some sort of war garden . . . y’know, to go with the statue thing . . . Digging for Victory and all that jazz . . . but it didn’t come to anything. Got cold feet cos of vandals.’
‘Thank you.’ McLeish dismissed him with a curt nod. Somewhat bemused, he rejoined the others and reported what he had learned.
‘What’s in the basement, Kate?’ Markham asked urgently. ‘I remember you showing me a map of the building, but I didn’t realize it connected with the garden.’
‘Me neither, sir. I checked it out with Shelly. It was just extra storage space as far as I could see . . . medical supplies and stationery . . . We came down the backstairs from reception . . . I don’t remember any door going outside.’
‘Lead the way, please.’ The DI’s face was taut and unsmiling. At her stricken expression, he added more gently, ‘Don’t blame yourself . . . You weren’t to know.’
‘Sounds like Bromgrove’s best kept secret,’ Noakes said consolingly. ‘Never heard owt about there being a bunker in the garden.’
* * *
The basement was just as Burton had described it.
McLeish surveyed the whitewashed space, his eyes coming to rest on a
